RevDem Podcast

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Mark R. Beissinger introduces his unique global dataset and probabilistic structural approach to revolution; analyzes the prevalent form of revolution in our age he calls “urban civic”; dissects how the consequences of revolution have shifted over time; and reflects on how revolution may be changing again today. Mark R. Beissinger is Henry W. Putnam Professor in the Department of Politics at Princeton. His main fields of interest are social movements, revolutions, nationalism, state-building, and imperialism, with special reference to the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet states. In addition to numerous articles and book chapters, Mark R. Beissinger is the author or editor of six books, which include Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (from 2002) and the volume Historical Legacies of Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe (co-edited with Stephen Kotkin, from 2014). He has received several prestigious awards for his scholarship, and his research has been supported by numerous leading academic institutions. He has also acted as the President of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies and as Director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, among others.

“Reverting from illiberal regimes back to a state of the Rule of Law will be a long and difficult process. Probably the more instruments there are the better in order to advance along that path.” In March 2022, before the Hungarian elections, our editor Oliver Garner sat down with Professor Armin von Bogdandy, director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law in Heidelberg, Germany, and Honorary Professor for Public Law at the University in Frankfurt am Main. They discussed Professor von Bogdandy’s recent article, published with Luke Dimitrios Spieker, on restoring the rule of law through criminal responsibility. Viktor Orban’s election victory on 3 April means that such proposals are unlikely to be pursued in the near future in Hungary. However, the question of how to revert from illiberalism remains live, and more relevant than ever in the shadow of Russia’s continuing invasion of Ukraine.

In light of the recent solidifying of what could be named as ‘populist international’, we are opening a conversation on one of the first areas and people that were targeted: history and historians. Populist regimes and their supporters feed themselves on historical myths, distortions and subversion of the public debate on historical themes. The responsibility is both on those who participate in the making of populist abuses of history as professional researchers, as well as on those who engage with public history as social commentators and public figures. Program Part 1: "Walking on eggshells: historiography in the populist contexts” (moderated by Lucija Balikić, CEU) Tjaša Konovšek (Institute for Contemporary History Ljubljana) Réka Krizmanics (University of Leipzig) Vita Zalar (Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts) Part 2: "Pundits, megaphones and marches: struggles over public history” (moderated by Vita Zalar, Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts) Orsolya Sudár (Central European University) Florian Bieber (University of Graz) Lucija Balikić (Central European University)

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Peter Osnos discusses his new edited volume George Soros: A Life in Full. Osnos introduces the concept of the volume, reflects on Soros’ remarkably complex character, addresses his path-breaking philanthropy and special commitment to education, and dissects his profound and fraught connection to Hungary and the post-Soviet world. Peter Osnos has had a long and distinguished career as a reporter, editor, and publisher. He worked for The Washington Post and then at Random House until he founded Public Affairs in 1997. He has published a host of major authors and public figures, including four former US Presidents and several of the most celebrated personalities in human rights, business, and media. In 2021, Peter Osnos released An Especially Good View. Watching History Happen, a reported memoir. George Soros: A Life in Full is out on April 5. It contains chapters by Leon Botstein, Eva Hoffman, Michael Ignatieff, Ivan Krastev, and Darren Walker, among a host of other distinguished authors.

Britain is probably the last country that comes to mind when one thinks of alliances of parties. But, in fact, there have been many examples of co-operation among parties both in the governmental, parliamentary and extra-parliamentary arenas. No academic work has analysed yet these various examples of cooperation in a comprehensive fashion. The first one will be Alan Wager’s book to be published by Oxford University Press. He discusses his work with Zsolt Enyedi, Party Co-Op Series host and a professor of political science at the Central European University.

India, like many countries, faces democratic backsliding. In the newest episode of the RevDem Rule of Law podcast, assistant editor Gaurav Mukherjee talks to Tarunabh Khaitan (Head of Research at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford, Professor of Public Law and Legal Theory at the Faculty of Law, Fellow at Mansfield College, and Honorary Professorial Fellow at the Melbourne Law School) about his recent work on the phenomenon of democratic backsliding in India, the rise of an unchecked executive, and the role that courts and opposition parties play in protecting democracy.

Thanks to the Latin American experience political science realized the significance of the institutionalization of political parties and party systems. The actual forms and logic of cooperation among parties has received so far less attention, even though party alliances play a crucial role in a number of countries of the region. In this episode, Zsolt Enyedi and Jennifer McCoy examine party cooperation in Nicaragua, Chile, Venezuela and Colombia.

Simone Weil’s figure poses a challenge to each reader of hers. In this conversation, our editor Kasia Krzyżanowska speaks to prof. Robert Zarestky (professor at the University of Houston), about the heroine of his recently published biography: Simone Weil.

In this conversation, Lucija Balikić, a researcher affiliated with the CEU Democracy Institute and a PhD candidate at the History department of the same university, discusses Forging Germans: Youth, Nation and the National Socialist Mobilization of Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia (1918-1944) (Oxford University Press, 2020) with the author, Caroline Mezger. The conversation touches upon issues related to researching children and youth as historical actors in their own right, complex avenues of negotiating “Germanness” in historical perspective, as well as the dynamics of the National Socialist takeover of youth organizations in the regions of Bačka and Western Banat during the interwar and World War II periods.

In this conversation with our editor, Kasia Krzyżanowska, Dr. Signe Larsen (a Fellow by Examination in Law at Magdalen College, University of Oxford) talks about her recently published book The Constitutional Theory of the Federation and the European Union (OUP 2021). In this interview, Dr. Larsen elaborates on the (largely unacknowledged) nature of the EU as a federation, varieties of constitutionalism within EU Member States, and the impact of colonial legacies on the EU.